In the transport industries (for example, the automotive, rail and aerospace industries), it is common practice to produce large, dimensionally accurate master models. These models are used by engineers for conceptual design of the individual component parts of the final product.
The state-of-the-art often involves a “building block” approach wherein multiple boards are glued together to produce a rough model structure and then are machined to form the desired shape (illustrated in FIG. 1). This approach, however, is labor intensive and requires precision operations, leading to high cost, and moreover results in a model having bondlines at the surface, an appearance which is aesthetically undesirable.
There is thus a need in the industry for a model and method of making a model that is characterized by low cost and a smooth seamless surface free of bondlines. U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,707,477 and 5,773,047 describe a method for making prepreg parts for use in the aerospace industry where pliable solid paddies prepared from syntactic epoxy material are hand-applied to a block made by stacking successive layers of aluminum honeycomb core, which entire resulting structure is heat cured to effect cure of the paddies. However, this approach is labor intensive in that it involves hand application of the pliable solid paddies to the honeycomb core as well as requiring heating of the entire structure in order to cure the applied paddies. The resulting models are also of relatively high density.
There thus remains continued need in the art for a model and method of producing same where the model is characterized by lower production cost, lower weight and a more uniform surface having improved smoothness and free of bondlines.